bushes, rush towards any light. Thus Frederick Baron Trenck too
is here; mazed, purblind, from the cells of Magdeburg; Minotauric cells,
and his Ariadne lost! Singular to say, Trenck, in these years, sells
wine; not indeed in bottle, but in wood.

Nor is our England without her missionaries. She has her live-saving
Needham; to whom was solemnly presented a 'civic sword,'--long since
rusted into nothingness. Her Paine: rebellious Staymaker; unkempt; who
feels that he, a single Needleman, did by his 'Common Sense' Pamphlet,
free America;--that he can and will free all this World; perhaps even
the other. Price-Stanhope Constitutional Association sends over to
congratulate; (Moniteur, 10 Novembre, 7 Decembre, 1789.) welcomed by
National Assembly, though they are but a London Club; whom Burke and
Toryism eye askance.

On thee too, for country's sake, O Chevalier John Paul, be a word spent,
or misspent! In faded naval uniform, Paul Jones lingers visible here;
like a wine-skin from which the wine is all drawn. Like the ghost
of himself! Low is his once loud bruit; scarcely audible, save, with
extreme tedium in ministerial ante-chambers; in this or the other
charitable dining-room, mindful of the past. What changes; culminatings
and declinings! Not now, poor Paul, thou lookest wistful over the Solway
brine, by the foot of native Criffel, into blue mountainous Cumberland,
into blue Infinitude; environed with thrift, with humble friendliness;
thyself, young fool, longing to be aloft from it, or even to be away
from it. Yes, beyond that sapphire Promontory, which men name St. Bees,
which is not sapphire either, but dull sandstone, when one gets close to
it, there is a world. Which world thou too shalt taste of!--From yonder
White Haven rise his smoke-clouds; ominous though ineffectual. Proud
Forth quakes at his bellying sails; had not the wind suddenly shifted.
Flamborough reapers, homegoing, pause on the hill-side: for what
sulphur-cloud is that that defaces the sleek sea; sulphur-cloud spitting
streaks of fire? A sea cockfight it is, and of the hottest; where
British Serapis and French-American Bon Homme Richard do lash and
throttle each other, in their fashion; and lo the desperate valour has
suffocated the deliberate, and Paul Jones too is of the Kings of the
Sea!

The Euxine, the Meotian waters felt thee next, and long-skirted Turks,
O Paul; and thy fiery soul has wasted itself in thousand
contradictions;--to no purpose.